Batteries could be a new type of device that would work to mitigate reactor overloads. Say, a 10MW battery at level 3, 50MW at level 5, and 150MW at level 7 (these values being roughly half what equivalently-leveled reactors can output). Each could provide max power for 10 seconds (or reduced power for longer), and would take 15 seconds to reach full charge from empty. They'd kick in whenever devices would normally be disabled due to overload, and would never draw more power to recharge than the reactor could output. Effectively they'd let you run loadouts that you "can't afford", but not for sustained periods, and at the cost of a device slot.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been proposed earlier. I myself once thought of a similar idea of "capacitors" during one of my short-lived non-Transcendence projects. It seems like a potentially useful tradeoff, though there should be some notable advantage of installing a capacitor over just upgrading the reactor (i.e. lower cost) and also some smaller notable disadvantage (i.e. lower efficiency)

I would not use them, especially if I need a device slot to use it. If I need that much power to use a battery, ten to fifteen seconds would not be enough time. Just suck it up and get a bigger reactor.

I would not use them, especially if I need a device slot to use it. If I need that much power to use a battery, ten to fifteen seconds would not be enough time. Just suck it up and get a bigger reactor.

That's 10 seconds at maximum discharge rate. If you were only 1MW over your reactor's capacity, a 10MW battery would last for 100 seconds.

As for the device slot, there has to be some tradeoff to using them so they don't just act as a de facto reactor enhancement that everyone installs automatically. I do think that a device-slot-using battery would need to be considerably cheaper and/or more readily-available than just buying a new reactor. I guess though that you could also do things like have an armor that provided some energy storage, at the cost of being weaker than usual to ion/EMP/whatever. Plus of course external batteries that work until something shoots them.

Or, hell, you could build it into the reactor itself, so you could choose between the standard 100MW reactor, or an 80MW (edit: better make that 90MW) reactor with 50MW battery backup UPS. Higher peak output, lower sustained output. Actually, I really like that idea.

Solar armor does power storage or power savings discount, although you need to be near a sun for that benefit. Other armor probably could emulate that, although the modder probably will not have access to the blue bars that solar armor use to show power savings, if making such armor non-reliant on the sun.

I knew the idea was too obvious to not have been done before. Though that sounds like a different approach -- a manually-activated consumable item that temporarily boosts your power capacity. Sounds a little fiddly to use to me, honestly; I hate having to dig through my item list in the middle of a fight.